Fears about IS presence spawn unusual alliances

Even by Afghanistan's standards of often-shifting alliances, a meeting between ethnic Hazara elders and commanders of the Taliban insurgents who have persecuted them for years was extraordinary.

The Hazaras - a largely Shiite minority killed in their thousands during the Taliban's hard-line Sunni Islamist rule of the 1990s - came to their old enemies seeking protection against what they deemed an even greater threat: masked men operating in the area calling themselves "Daish", a term for Islamic State in the region.

In a sign of changing times, the Taliban commanders agreed to help, said Abdul Khaliq Yaqubi, one of the elders at the meeting held in the eastern province of Ghazni.